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Siri AI Ships (But Still Beta)

23 September 2026 at 20:33

Apple:

Siri AI is a completely reimagined version of Siri that is more personal and powerful. With detailed responses and rich, natural conversations, Siri AI helps users get more done than ever before.

Built on Apple Intelligence, this new version of Siri draws on personal context understanding to help users find what they need in the moment across messages, emails, photos, and more. And with even more systemwide app actions, Siri AI can help users with tasks such as drafting an email from scratch or editing and sharing a set of photos.

[…]

Siri AI already works seamlessly with apps from Apple’s vast ecosystem of developers. Users can continue to take action in the apps they already use with Siri, like texting a friend in WhatsApp or playing a book on Audible. And soon, users will be able to ask Siri AI to draft an email in Microsoft Outlook, search for a homework assignment in Notability, or add a restaurant recommendation to Tripsy.

With onscreen awareness, Siri AI can answer questions or take actions related to the content on a user’s screen. For example, while viewing their favorite sports team’s website, a user can ask Siri to find all the upcoming home games and add them directly to their calendar. And Siri AI can also use broad world knowledge to get up-to-date information on virtually any topic.

Federico Viticci:

And these advantages sum up why I struggled to understand Siri AI at first. Is Siri AI only passable because it has an unfair advantage due to proprietary integrations that other AI models can’t use? Can it stand on its own as a good implementation of AI for most people? Does it fundamentally reinvent how we use our devices, or is it just a lot of hype for a slightly better Siri?

[…]

I find Siri AI’s underlying models to be subpar compared to the competition: for anything beyond a simple knowledge query, I can’t see Siri AI replacing ChatGPT and its superior reasoning modes combined with web search. For simpler queries – the kind that a Google AI overview could also capably answer – the balance of speed and terse formatting is optimal in Siri AI. If I’m watching a movie and want to know how old an actor is, or if I want to know the meaning of a word, Siri AI is perfect for it and I no longer need to reach for ChatGPT or my personal agent in Open Minis. As we’ll see later, I find the Siri app to be extremely barebones and representative of the state of the art for chatbot design…two years ago.

The lack of an “agent mode” for Siri AI stings, and it’s why I can’t replace my beloved Codex or Hermes Agent setups with it.

However, Siri AI eventually clicked for me for the opposite reason: it can do things in and with apps that no other third-party agent can. Yes, they are simpler actions, and, no, results aren’t always perfect; but if you love the Apple app ecosystem and prefer using excellent native apps to cross-platform web ones, Siri AI is a breath of fresh air in the AI landscape right now.

[…]

By and large, what Apple has built works, and as a user of Apple devices and the new Siri AI, you will never see any of its underlying complexity.

Ivan Mehta:

For years, I barely used Siri for anything beyond menial tasks like setting timers or alarms. That has changed with iOS 27, as I now repeatedly use Siri for complex requests and to make sense of on-screen context.

David Pogue:

Apple may be the last company to embrace AI. But wow, was it worth the wait.

The new AI Siri came out this week as part of OS 27 for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac, and it’s a life changer. A phone changer. It replaces most Google searches, most ChatGPT or Claude interactions, and cumulative hours of fumbling and searching and dragging and copying and finding and tapping and pasting.

[…]

Now that the final version is out, I wanted to see how often it gets things right. It is AI, after all. So I ran it through 125 tests.

Andrew Cunningham:

By default, Siri uses the Apple models described above, primarily the AFM 3 Cloud model (you can tell the local models can’t do much here because most Siri queries fail if you switch off your Internet connection). ChatGPT is still available in System Settings as an extension, with an option to make it speak using a different voice than Siri’s.

While Apple Intelligence as a whole can’t be turned off, users can opt out of the Siri AI beta at this point if they’d like. If you do this, you’ll be given the option to turn Siri off entirely or to use what Apple now dubs “Siri Classic.” In either mode, the UI for Spotlight reverts to its previous style.

The new Siri experience is so much like Copilot or the AI answers in Google Search that it barely seems worth remarking upon, which is both a comment about how “behind” its rivals Apple is in the AI race and how “caught up” Apple feels now that it has shipped something usable.

[…]

The Siri app isn’t much to look at, but I actually like that about it—I’ve lost track of the number of completely different Copilot apps Microsoft has shipped with Windows 11 and what the capabilities of those versions have been. Compared to that, it’s kind of nice to have a simple, clean, Mac-native app that just presents a chronological list of every question or conversation you’ve had with Siri.

Howard Oakley:

So far the biggest single objection to Golden Gate has been the storage space required to support this. As I’ve shown in my own figures, this could be as low as 10 GB, but is more likely to be around 30 GB. Add to that the 28 GB or so required for the system itself, and that’s a substantial burden on your Mac’s internal SSD.

Kirk McElhearn:

MacRumors ran an article this morning about this today, and what’s interesting is how different people report different storage sizes for the same devices. Why are some people, running the same operating system, seeing different storage sizes? And why isn’t the size the same on all Macs, at least those running the same processor? My M4 iMac reports 32.22 GB; not that big a difference, but still about 1.6 GB less than my laptop.

Nick Heer:

I do not think Apple should not have local models. But as it is surely the single largest system component now, consuming about the same space as an entire Sonoma installation, I think it is stingy of Apple to ship 256 GB base storage even on its lowest-priced computers.

See also: Reddit and Hacker News.

Christian:

I installed Golden Gate a week ago. Since then, I have been noticing an expected battery drain (Siri AI (useless for me), new OS, indexing) that has increased in comparison to Tahoe. This is expected, I know. The thing is that this does not stop, even after more than a week. It has gotten so much worse that the MacBook’s battery is being depleted even while sleeping to zero within hours. It is so bad that it even struggles to get beyond the point of being able to boot when connected to a charger. Eventually, it works, but it is a struggle.

Juli Clover:

According to pdfu, HomePod Software 27 includes the system behind Siri AI, called “Linwood,” along with new status lights in the Siri AI colors. […] Since HomePod Software 27 is out and Siri AI isn’t available on existing HomePods, it’s possible support will be limited to new HomePod models.

Previously:

Update (2026-09-28): David Pogue:

But there’s also a Siri app (on iPhone, iPad, Mac) whose primary function is keeping a running log of your requests. Today, I thought maybe I’d share mine, so you can see what Siri is like in practice.

I’ve deliberately picked a hectic 24-hour period from last week so that you can see the potential. The takeaway is that I’ve largely stopped opening apps. When I need something, I hold in the side button, ask my question, get the answer, and put the phone away. Often, people who witness it can’t believe what they’ve just seen.

Update (2026-10-09): John Gruber:

I feel like Siri AI has gotten worse since iOS 27.0 was officially released. It feels a bit slower and I seem to get worse answers, sometimes. I asked it for a word today, using it as an interactive thesaurus, and it simply told me it couldn’t. It never did that over the summer.

Update (2026-10-16): Pommette:

I’m excited about the new Siri AI. However I’m not feeling the love yet. I’m finding that approximately a quarter to a third of my requests on both my Mac and iPhone produce a spinning white circle as it churns through a list of searches that it’s doing internally, followed by “Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later.” This happens for simple requests, for complex requests, and too many requests in between. When it works I feel the magic but boy, I really can’t count on it in all the ways that people are gushing about.

[…]

[If] all processing is supposed to happen on device, does anybody know why we need an internet connection for Siri AI to work for things like “tell me what’s on my calendar tomorrow” or “can you pull up the email with my theater tickets”?

Darth_Ender_Ro (Hacker News):

There’s nothing like havin an iPhone in your pocket, an AWU at your wrist, headphones on and telling Siri to call someone, calling, talking, hanging up and then asking Siri to call another person [only] to hear “You need to unlock your phone first!”.

This happens to me all the time.

John Siracusa:

Please make it stop.

OmniFocus 4.9

23 September 2026 at 20:33

Ken Case:

OmniFocus 4.9 adds support for Siri AI, optional new date parsing assistance via Apple Intelligence, and a range of new and updated App Intents exposed as Shortcuts actions.

[…]

In our testing we’ve found that the new Siri AI hasn’t yet learned how to work with app capabilities that it hasn’t specifically been trained on, even for App Intents that are available in Shortcuts and Spotlight. For example, its understanding of how to work with OmniFocus is based on how it’s been trained to work with the Reminders app. Our work in OmniFocus 4.9 means that Siri now knows about “reminders” in OmniFocus (i.e. actions and Inbox items), “lists” (i.e. projects) which contain reminders, and any “groups” (i.e. folders) that lists have been organized into. Siri can assign and edit reminder due dates, flags, repeat schedules, and notes and image attachments in OmniFocus. This is another great leap forward! But as soon as you try to go beyond what Reminders can do, you find its limits: for example, it doesn’t understand the distinction between due dates, planned dates, and defer dates.

Siri also doesn’t really understand much about how our document-based apps work, because Apple hasn’t trained it on our specific apps or anything equivalent. So, Siri doesn’t know how to make an outline, or a diagram, or a Gantt chart. We expect this to improve over time—after all, we’ve worked with other language models that do understand how to make those things—but it’s important to understand Siri’s current limits.

[…]

With Siri AI, Spotlight becomes even more important as a source for personal context. You can ask Siri about content in your OmniFocus database, so Siri can summarize the actions you’ve completed this week, or tell you what items you might consider working on soon.

My favorite change in OmniFocus 4.9 seems less exiting, but I’m irrationally happy about it. Last year, as part of the Liquid Glass update, they redesigned the Perspectives Bar on iOS to automatically collapse and expand as you scroll. I found the animations distracting, it messed up my muscle memory, and it required lots of extra taps. In 4.9, there’s a new Show Perspective Bar option, which you can set to Automatically (the 4.8 behavior), Manually (stay collapsed but expand when you tap), or Always (show the expanded state all the time, nothing moves). This is, of course, what I chose.

I’m still seeing the previously mentioned glitches in the Mac app with tabbing, spontaneous tag collapsing, and the window moving itself between spaces. The iOS app sometimes still shows an out-of-date list of flagged actions.

Previously:

Como escolher quantos apps são sugeridos na Busca do iPhone/iPad

21 October 2026 at 11:30

Usando a função de Busca (Search), é possível encontrar praticamente tudo que esteja armazenado no seu iPhone ou iPad a partir da Tela de Início, usando o botão dedicado ou o gesto de deslizar o dedo para baixo.

A Maçã permite escolher a quantidade de aplicativos exibidos como sugestões nesse local — ou até mesmo desativar as sugestões, se preferir.

Veja como é simples fazer isso! 📱

  1. No seu iPhone ou iPad, abra os Ajustes (Settings).
  2. Toque em “Buscar”.
  1. Na seção “Antes de Buscar”, use o menu suspenso ao lado de “Sugerir Apps” para escolher entre “Apps de 4”, “Apps de 8” ou “Não Sugerir”.

Como você prefere usar por aí? 😀

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